On this second Sunday of Advent, we’re talking about waiting. I’m wondering, how well do you wait?

Think of the places and times you’ve had to wait. How good are you at that? At waiting in long lines? Waiting for news about a test? Waiting for something to happen? I know there’s quite a few young people among us who are waiting for a special day this month.

We all wait differently, but I think our ability to wait has a lot to do with how much patience we have. When I was thinking about patience, I realized that patience is directly correlated with peace. It’s very difficult to find peace if one is not patient. They go together.

One of the paradoxes of Christianity is that we believe Christ has been born and is the Messiah, and yet we don’t fully realize what that means.

Because we haven’t as a world found peace. We’re in this in between space. This paradox is actually the tension between Christianity and Judaism, because we say the Messiah has come. They say, if the Messiah had come, there would not be injustice anymore. There would not be hatred. There would be peace on earth. We have this tension there. What does this peace on earth look like? How do we make that come about?

One of the scriptures that is used this Sunday is about John and the Baptist. One of the pieces that he talks about with the messiah coming is that is that “Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plane” – Isaiah 40:4.

It’s this evening out that is supposed to happen with the messianic age. We don’t have that yet. We’re still on our way towards that.

While we are in this time of waiting, let’s talk about Zachariah a little bit. I think Zachariah and Elizabeth can be a model for us on how it is to wait.

When I think about Zachariah and Elizabeth, for me, it brings up Abraham and Sarah, an older couple who thought that they were beyond childbearing, who suddenly are going to bear a child, because of what God is doing. God is in the midst of this. And he can’t even talk about it. He has to wait in silence, so to speak.

He is able to write, because I wondered about that. I thought, well, can’t he just write this all down? It appears that he doesn’t write anything down until John is born. He writes down his name will be John and then his speech is returned.

But can you imagine having that kind of wonderful news? Maybe a little scary too, right? Could be a little fear in there. Some of us in here are beyond childbearing years. How about if somebody told you you were going to have a child? I enjoy having that grandson that I love to death and then I give him back to his mother.

That’s where they were. They were in this expectancy. Imagine it. This almost but not yet. The paradox.

Then we have Romans 12:18-27. ‘Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”

It’s so important that I would challenge you to read it every single day this week. Just keep reading it every day because it is the heart of Christianity. It’s about focusing on love and how can we love others in a better way.

How do we do that? It starts with let love be genuine. It’s not about putting on a mask and being kind. It’s about really being kind, wanting to do that from your heart and reminding yourself each day, what that’s about.

The part we didn’t read the next verse, Romans 12:19, goes into “vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” God will take care of all the other stuff. Our role is to love others, to not get caught up in our stuff, so that we can see the needs of others.

The words we used in raising our children were helpful, thoughtful, and kind. That was their goal. Every day you needed to be helpful, thoughtful, and kind. If we just took that to heart, we would be closer. But I want to encourage you to sit with that.

I know that right now life is difficult. There’s a lot of us that are grieving for many different reasons that life just feels overwhelming. So, I want to share with you this meditation practice. It’s called RAIN.

RAIN is an acronym and it was created by Tara Brock. These are the four steps.

Recognize: What’s going on? Recognize the situation and how you are reacting to it. Recognize, look at your feelings. When something happens, notice your body. Are you clenching up? Do you feel all jittery? What’s happening? Just notice it because in noticing it, it gives you some space to then allow it.

Allow: This is the let it be and let God by allowing it, noticing it and allowing it. We give room for the spirit and the spirit has space and time to work with us. There’s another phrase that says, what we resist persists. So don’t resist it.

Investigate: Be curious, go for it. That will take you from a place of maybe anger or frustration. Be curious, go into that wonder. What’s this about? Why am I feeling like this? What’s going on here?

Nurture: Be kind to yourself too. Give yourself grace. Forgive yourself. Allow God to speak to your heart. Listen to your heart. Because that divine, I often talk about the little bit of the divine that is in each of us. We can learn to hear it. When we practice listening to it. Let’s practice that. Let’s work on those muscles.

When I was preparing last week’s sermon, there was a lot about the muscle of hope. Well, I think there’s a muscle here too, because we only experience peace when we practice peace. We will only find it elsewhere when we have it first within us. If we go looking for peace outside of us. We’re not going to find it.

It has to start here.

So I encourage you to think about that this week. Pay attention to how you’re feeling in the different situations. Allow God and the spirit within you to take care of you so that you can be there for others.

May it be so. Amen.

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This is our week to begin this period of waiting and watching.

This period is where we look for what new thing is God doing in this world. How is God breaking into our world today? What hope, peace, love, and joy is God bringing?

The thing I was sitting with was this idea of what are we longing for right now? And as I was writing this sermon, my dog came up and pestered me. I thought, I know what she wants. She wants fewer people. It’s been a busy week. She wants fewer people in the house, fewer dogs in the house, and a little bit less noise. Let’s go back to normal, right? Let’s have that normal life again, that simpler life.

But the reality of normal is that we’re using those rose-colored glasses. What we think is normal is more of a dream that probably never existed anyway. We paint everything and smooth out all the edges so that we only remember the good parts and forget all the hard parts. But life is hard. That’s a reality.

We need to remember that the point of coming together is so that we support one another in all of the hard stuff. It can be nice to support one another in the fun stuff and the good stuff. We all like that. But we need one another in the hard stuff and when life gets real.

So, I was thinking about, based on our vision and mission, what are we longing for?

What came to me was compassionate care for creation. Our scripture today (Luke 2:1-3 & Romans 8:18-25) is about creation, and we’re looking to give that compassionate care and to share that with one another, with the world, and with our community.

To try to be there for one another. What does that look like? Well, back in early November, I read this article by Guy Sayles, who is a pastor in Western North Carolina. He wrote about the experience of Hurricane Helene, where the mountains of North Carolina never experienced anything like that before.

What he talked about first was a quote from Mr. Rogers that Mr. Roger’s mother always told him when things were going wrong, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.”

Who are the helpers and what are they doing? He started looking around at what was happening in his community, which was devastated. Hurricane Helene was a leveler or an equalizer of sorts. I don’t mean that in a good way. But, it brought the helpers. It brought the religious and the other non-profit volunteers to help. It brought FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. It brought the North Carolina National Guard and the state and local agencies.

But more than that. It brought neighbors out to help one another. A woman who had rain barrels started tapping off the water so that people had water to flush their toilets. Another neighbor who had a generator put it in their driveway and set it up as a charging station so everybody could come and charge their phones or other devices. Neighbors who had freezers that no longer had electricity started handing out the food because it was going to thaw and go bad.

Guy said people would sit around the generator as their devices were charging and they got to know one another. They learned to trust one another. They became a community. They gave each other hope in the middle of this disaster. They were there for each other. That’s where our hope can come from.

So today we have this letter from Paul.

If you are a regular attendee, you know that I struggle with Paul because he has this circular logic that he uses and you can get very confused. But before I get to that, I do want to talk about the fact that this is Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. I usually say to the churches in Rome, and I’m afraid that I might be misrepresenting that to you. They didn’t have cathedrals and the Vatican didn’t exist, this was before that.

At the time of Paul’s letters people were gathered in homes and they were of all ages and all economic groups. They were the merchants, the slaves, and even the destitute. They all came together, just like in Acts. They talk about everyone came together and shared as there was need. Kind of like that story about the hurricane. Same idea. These communities would come together and the message of Jesus’s love, the available salvation, and this equalizing love. Everybody was included. It was this inclusiveness that attracted the people and the reason Christianity grew.

So to them, Paul is saying the difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. Some of us know what it’s like to be pregnant. It’s uncomfortable and it’s challenging, but it’s not only around us, it’s within us. I think right now, when I look at the world and I look at us, we want something new. We want something new to come out. We want more justice for people. Not less. We want more inclusivity. We want more freedom, not less. We want more liberty, not less.

Imagine a pregnant person, how we get larger. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us, but that is our hope. That is this thing that God is building among us. But, the longer we wait, the larger we become and the more joyful our expectancy. So something is coming. A real justice with peace that we don’t know what that looks like yet.

But it’s going to be hard to get there. It’s going to involve pain and it’s going to mean that we have to come together and work together to survive it.

As I was walking the dogs yesterday morning, another dog walker had lost his gentle leader.

So this morning I brought him a gentle leader and handed it to him. He said I feel like other dog owners are supporting me. And I said, well, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? That’s being community. I have something that I no longer need and you need it. Why would I not give it to you? I don’t need anything. You don’t need to buy it from me. I can just give it to you.

Our materialistic consumeristic culture starts to program us where we think that we have to pay for everything and we think that if we own it then it’s worth something and we ought to get something for it. Maybe we can just share this idea of justice.

So do we really long for a better world? Do we really want to figure out more of what this hope that’s coming is about?

Advent is a reflective season where we’re called to think. It’s not by chance that this hits in December as the trees have now let go of their leaves. They’re going into this dormant time. The nights are getting longer. We’re to rest more and take more time to slow down.

And what do we do instead? Fill everything with lights, loud music, and bright colors as we try to ward off the darkness. But if we can accept some of the darkness, we can light a candle. We don’t have to be in the pitch dark, but if we can take the time to stop and to give thanks to God, then to think, to reflect on our days.

Where was I merciful? Where was I loving and where did I fail? Because we all have those moments that aren’t our best.

It’s good for us to think about these and then to listen to our hearts because that’s where the still small voice of God is speaking. That’s where Christ meets us, in the quiet and the listening.

Can we give ourselves some time to do that? To listen deeply for what Christ is calling us to hope and long for. Then watch and wait with patience.

May it be so. Amen.

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I would like us to think about what God’s love looks like.

How does that feel if you had to describe God’s love? What would you say about it? I’m going to invite you into a little bit of theology with me because I think you know more than you realize.

Think of a Bible story that you know. Whatever comes to mind. How was love present in that story? Now, I need the extroverts to talk.

The way the widow gave all that she had, she did not hold back. So that’s what love looks like. Love looks like giving what you have and being generous with what you have. That’s God’s love.

The good Samaritan. I love the fact that we have this whole window on the good Samaritan. If you didn’t recognize that before, that is the good Samaritan window where the person helps. God’s love is reaching out to those who are in need and helping. Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.” – Luke 10:37

Matthew 25:40, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” It’s about reaching out and doing something. It’s not just this ethereal peace.

When is God showing us a love that calls us to be more than what we are or who we are at this moment? I think there’s this balance between the God who loves us and says that we are loved and worthy just as we are in this moment and the God who wants us to know that we have the potential to be more than that, to be better than what we are, to be more loving.

It is in the scripture from 1 John 4:8, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

What do we do with that? What does that look like? What is striking to me is that this scripture is meant to be an encouragement, but it’s also meant to tell us that everyone who loves then knows God, whether they put it in that kind of language or not.

It’s a very inclusive love. It’s not God loves these people because those are the people we love. And these people over here they’re not that loving so God must not love them either. What I hear in the scripture is God loves period and we’re the ones who want God to hate our enemies. But I don’t think that’s what this says.

This says God loves. God is love.

We’re the ones who play these childish games and want people to be out of God’s love. This is hard. It’s simple and hard. It’s simplistic, we are to love everyone. Some people are not very lovable and that’s hard work, but that is God’s expectation on us.

I mentioned in the Come Sunday that I’ve been sitting with who we are to become with our new vision and mission.

We’ve been living into that now for a year. So what are we becoming? Well, I think we’re becoming the beloved community. We’re to be about building a beloved community. So, that means we need to be love. Does that make sense? In order to be beloved, we need to be love. So how do we be love? How do we love others?

Well, one of the things that came to me as I sat with that was to show up and listen. That’s how you love. You love by showing up and listening rather than telling others what they need to do. But if we listen to them, if we help them, if we ask them questions, they probably know what they need.

It’s about listening, really listening. I think there are so many people in this world who are hurting because they feel like no one’s listening. I mean, they’re saying the pandemic of this year is loneliness. We can be all together and yet we’re lonely because we don’t let anybody else know those dark things that circle in our brains, those places that we don’t like to share.

Last week, Craig Gross was here with you. I know Craig well and Craig calls it his drawer. He said he has this drawer of dark things that he only opens so much. Then he closes it again because nobody else needs to see the dark things that are in the drawer.

Here in Lancaster County, we like to put a lot under the rug and we hide things there. We were taught to hide things. You don’t talk about your dirty laundry. You keep things private. You put on this stiff upper lip, right? Hold your chin high. Even if your world’s falling apart, unless we find a safe space to let ourselves fall apart, we’re all just a hot mess and we have to be able to create that safe space, which is part of our vision, creating a safe space for those who are vulnerable or afraid.

The reality is we’re already sitting here. Some people aren’t here who need a safe space now more than ever. So we need to be clear about who we are.

When we get to the annual meeting today, I put together an overview of what has happened over the past year and where we’re going.

As I was doing that, I was struck by the fact that my brain wanted to say the outreach commission did this and the property commission did that and the education commission did this and the parish life commission did that.

I stopped myself and I realized that’s the way we have defined it a lot of the time. Instead of saying, we did this and we did that. Do you hear the difference? I heard the difference. I felt the difference when we go from this group and that group to being one group. What have we done and what will we do next?

That’s what this morning is about. It’s about going out and being love.

But I’ll tell you, as I said before, this is hard work. There are two things that you need to do to do this. You need to love. To go places that feed you or do things that feed you and that fill your cup. Go places that inspire you and bring out life in you where you feel invigorated rather than drained wherever that is.

Last Sunday I went to Longwood Garden. It’s gorgeous. The new conservatory is beautiful. Take time, put yourself in places where you see beautiful things, wherever that is.

We all have different things that do that for us. So think about what it is for you and make sure you’re including that in your life and remind yourself that to be love involves our faith and faith is risky. It’s scary sometimes. Faith is about believing in something that we can’t prove. Hope. We have to hold hope. Hope is about thinking something is going to happen that hasn’t happened yet. And love is about holding people in our hearts, even the people that are hard to hold.

This is from Facebook. It was posted by a book company, which turns out was Celtic Spirituality Book Company. I felt very good sharing it.

May it be so. Amen.

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If I would ask you, who are those in our culture you would name as blessed?

Think about that. Who does our culture say is blessed? I think about people who have extravagant materialist things such as houses or cars. People who have a good stock portfolio. People with large incomes. People who have achieved their dreams. Those are the people that our culture lifts up as blessed.

But who do we as the church name as blessed? Well, the word Makarios in Greek means blessed or to receive God’s favor. So, who is it that God prefers in the world? Well, God prefers the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in our midst. Those are the people God tells us over and over and over to care for. That’s who God prefers. God is looking for us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger.

So, let’s remind ourselves again about who Matthew’s audience is.

Because remember, we’re not in Mark, we’re in Matthew. Matthew is writing to this specific group of people who are Jewish and believe in Jesus. Scholars believe that they lived in Antioch of Syria in about 90 AD, which means they know that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

They are still under Roman occupation and will be for another almost 400 years. There’s not much sign of that changing. They are living in a time where they are doing too bad. It’s believed that they’re not the destitute, but they know the destitute. They see it. They know of the people who are in need. And they, in trying to find God, are also trying to figure out how they still live obeying the Jewish laws and following what they know of Jesus.

Matthew Chapter 5 is written to help them know more about Jesus and what Jesus calls for. They try to stay in their synagogues and they get forced out. They don’t have a place to be. They are literally forming the first churches. They’re trying to come together and form churches and they still carry that Hebrew Bible belief in blessings and curses. That idea from Deuteronomy choose life or death. God wants us to choose life, but if we choose badly there are curses that come with. Like last week with the sheep and the goats, you either choose well, or you don’t choose well.

This was still the time that Jesus lived in, and it’s the time that Matthew’s audience lives in, even though it is 60 years later. They are under an authoritative regime that is taxing them so that the wealthy can maintain power and have their extravagances and others are losing everything. Because, once you don’t have the ability to pay your taxes, then they start taking your land, your cattle, your animals, and your property. If you speak out against the empire then you’re arrested, and the penalty for speaking against the empire is crucifixion. Don’t miss that, because that’s important in Jesus’ story. That’s why Jesus is crucified, because he was a threat to the empire.

Yet, Jesus starts his first teaching in Matthew with this long sermon, and it goes on into chapter seven.

I don’t know how many of you watch the series on Amazon Prime called “The Chosen’, but “The Chosen” has a great scene about this. Their interpretation is that they have the character of Jesus say, “I’m giving them a map to know where to find me.” Matthew 5:1-11 is a map. Think about that.

Jesus is saying he is going to be with the poor, with the grieving, with the humble, with those who seek justice, with those who show mercy, with those who are listening for God, with those who make peace, and those who are harassed for being themselves, that’s where Jesus is.

Then, that last line, Matthew 5:11, if you follow me, if you look for righteousness, if you hunger for righteousness, then you also will suffer. But your reward will be great in heaven.

My friends, I think that we need to be honest about where we are in this time and place.

We are living in a time when there is authoritarianism that is trying to rule our lives. They are trying to gain power from the very bottom in Hempfield School District, who doesn’t have a contract for teachers. All the way up. They want to take away freedom.

We are exhausted and afraid. We just need to admit that. Life right now is hard. Admitting your problem is the first step in healing so we need to name that we are exhausted and afraid. The antidote for being exhausted and afraid is awe and wonder, so we have to shift our focus from the stuff we hear on tv to god. Remember that, Jesus First.

We need to shift our focus and realize that we too are loved no matter what you are dealing with in your life, you are loved and you are worthy. You are accepted and you are welcome here. This is a safe space for you. We claim that in our vision that we want to be that safe space for people to be themselves. We want to offer comfort and strength, not because we have answers, but because we are on a journey ourselves for our own answers. We will walk eachother home.

Now, I want to invite you into a few moments of peace. I have the most awesome pictures from the James Webb telescope.

I’m going to begin with the words of God to Job. “Then God said to Job, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know. Who set its measurements? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring tape on it? On what were its footings sunk? Who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang in unison and all the divine beings shouted? Can you bind the chains of the Pallades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Maserath in their season or guide the bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings? So that they may go and say to you, here we are. Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? Who can tilt the water skins of the heavens when the dust runs into a mass and the clouds cling together?'” – Job 38:4-7

“Then Job answered the Lord, ‘I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me, That I did not know here and I will speak. I will question you and you declare to me I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye see you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” – Job 42:1-6

From Psalm 104 “Bless the Lord. Oh, my soul. Oh, Lord. My God. You are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent. You set the beams of your chambers on the waters. You make the clouds your chariot. You ride on the wings of the wind. You make the winds your messengers. Fire and flame your ministers.”

I invite you this week to take some time in nature.

Take a few moments and watch the leaves fall. Appreciate the colors. Put yourself in a place that feeds your spirit.

I’m attracted to running water. So, Brubaker Run makes a beautiful sound. Or if you can walk down the path at Doorworth Park, walk down to the Little Conestoga. Just listen to it or appreciate all that you see, all that our natural world, all the ways that our God is showing us that we’re going into a cycle of death.

That is true, but joy will come in the morning and there will be a resurrection in the spring.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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Let me begin by saying that this was one of the hardest sermons I have given in a very long time because it does not support my theology.

When I think about God and who God is, I believe in a God of compassion and grace. While there is compassion in our verse today (Matthew 25:31-46), there is no grace—none. And so it challenges us to consider that possibility.

But I want to start with compassion. When I look at the life of Jesus, I see one who was compassionate. Compassion is used four times to describe Jesus, how Jesus felt, and it’s when he’s looking at a crowd of people and he has great compassion for their needs. The word in Greek actually means a lot of feelings inside stirred internally because that’s where they thought that feelings resided, they were internal things. Our definition of compassion is a feeling of sorrow or deep tenderness for one who is suffering or experiencing misfortune. It comes from the Latin calm being with or together pate to suffer. So it’s a suffering with.

When I look at Jesus life, that’s what I saw. I saw one who went with the people, who suffered with the people.

He wasn’t looking for privilege. He wasn’t looking to be in a place that had luxuries or he wasn’t even looking for power. When people started to come in mass, he left. He traveled with the people and went to the people that were hurting, he sat and ate with them. That’s how I see Jesus. That’s the part of God that I think Jesus was showing us.

So what do I do with Matthew 25:31-46? Well, I’ve got to look at the Gospel of Matthew first.

I wanted to talk about compassion, so where’s the compassion in this text? I think that’s the part that makes us love this text We love to hear, you should feed the hungry and you should give drink to those who are thirsty. You should welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned. We want to do that. Yes, that’s our rallying cry.

I associate this with the Outreach Commission. That’s what we want to be.

But the larger context of this is that it’s an apocalyptic scene about the end time and how things are going to end. So let’s look at Matthew’s gospel. To look at Matthew’s total gospel, we have to pay attention to who is the intended audience. Matthew is writing to people who are Jewish but believe in Jesus. They’re trying to figure out how they live that out. There aren’t Christian churches at this time for them to just go over to the Christian church. That didn’t exist. They had been in synagogues. And they were probably either asked to leave or told to leave. They were no longer welcome because they believed, because this is Matthew’s gospel, that Jesus was the Messiah.

So the Messiah had come. Think of the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel. The Messiah in the Jewish faith needs to come, be a human being, and come from the lineage of David. Do you remember how Matthew starts his gospel with that gray lineage and how he is connected to David? He goes back to Adam and Eve. But, he’s connected to, so he’s of the lineage of David. He’s mortal and divine. But he is a human being. In that first scene with Joseph, the angel tells Joseph, this is Emmanuel God with us, this is the one, this is the Messiah.

The whole gospel of Matthew is about Jesus as the Messiah. So Jesus knows the Jewish scriptures well. These people know the Jewish scriptures. They know the traditions and they’re trying to figure out how we continue to observe our Jewish traditions when we’re not allowed in the synagogue.

One of the things that comes with the Messiah is the end times.

When the Messiah comes, so there will be a third temple built in Jerusalem. This is hard because Matthew reads as if the second temple is still there. But it was written after the second temple was destroyed. So, there’s going to be a new temple in Jerusalem. And all the Jews from all over the world are going to be called together. And all people are going to be judged. And those who are evil and sinful will be sent, and Matthew loves the phrase, “to wailing and gnashing of teeth” or you’re going to be with God and you’re in eternity with God. You’re in heaven and everything’s wonderful.

This comes from a church and in the center, it shows Christ the king. So first of all, and our worship commission talked about this. What’s the difference between the son of man and the king?

On Jesus’ right, all are happy and everything’s good. They’ve got crosses and halos around their heads and life is good. Then on his left, which is where the goats go, there’s this beast that’s going to eat them and they look like they’re just in misery. So that’s the wailing and the gnashing of teeth for Matthew.

Matthew puts this as Jesus’s last teaching before his passion. Before Jesus leaves the teaching, he’s got to talk about the end. And because Matthew is probably Jewish and, and he’s talking to a Jewish audience, he lives out this messianic vision of what is going to happen. He’s not going to give up on that.

So, we have three parables that start at the end of the 24th chapter.

The first one is about the bridesmaids. Do you remember the parable of the ten bridesmaids? Where five remember to get oil and five do not. And the five who remember their oil when the bridegroom shows up. They’ve got oil and they go off into eternity. They go off to the wedding feast with the bridegroom. But for the five who do not, the doors are shut and you are not welcome.

Then it’s the parable of the slave owner, the master, and the slaves with talents. A talent is a weight that is worth money. They are given, we talk about talents as gifts, but they are money. It is about money. And the slaves are given different amounts of money. The ones who took the money and did things with the money are congratulated and the one slave who’s afraid takes the talent. He only gets one. He gets his talent and he buries it in the ground and he gets punished because he has done nothing with the money he was given. He hoarded it and did nothing with it.

Again, this idea of the good receives a reward. Those who do wrong receive a punishment. And now, we have this scene where all the people come and Jesus divides them. Christ the King divides them into the sheep and the goats. The sheep are rewarded and the goats receive eternal punishment.

The compassion in this story, because I like compassion and I’m using compassion more than love because I think love has so much we don’t understand what it means to love another person.

But what do we need? We need to be looking out because if we don’t, if we don’t look out, we never see the need of the other. I think we need to take the justice element seriously.

So anytime we have a parable, there is always a surprise. And you might think that the surprise is the fact that the goats are punished. But I’m going to argue that’s not where the surprise is.

And I had a list of them. I mean, I started with children at the border. I went to the border patrol website, the official government border patrol website, cause I don’t trust anybody else’s numbers. I wanted to know how many children came to the border because, to me, those are who we need to be concerned about.

But I also started thinking about the LGBTQ community. Especially how transgender and non-binary people are being picked on. Particularly transgender. And how about women and reproductive health? I could have gone there.

But the reality is, it’s not for me to pick. The surprise in this parable is that neither the ones who did it right or the ones who did it wrong knew that they were right or wrong. That my friends should give us a reason to pause on all of the things that we think we know and all of the people that we are being told need to be controlled.

We need to remember that Christ calls us to compassion. So if there is someone who is suffering, we need to suffer with them. I do think we still look for those who are being picked on, for those who are being denied rights, for those rights that are being taken away, or we’re being told they need to be taken away. We need to be careful.

God is the one who will judge.

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This week, I received an email from the Lancaster County Food Hub, which seemed like it fit in with our story.

The email included an account by a person named Ashley. That’s not her actual name, but that’s the name they gave her in the email.

Ashley is a 38 year-old woman who seemed to have it all. A successful career, a stylish wardrobe, and a luxury car. She appeared confident and thriving. But after losing her job through a company layoff, her world unraveled. Ashley’s unemployment benefits barely covered the cost of her rent. Finally, she faced the harsh reality of her dwindling resources.

Each day, she worried about how she was going to make it. and had growing anxiety about her future. Ashamed and overwhelmed, Ashley found herself trapped in silence, too embarrassed to ask for help. She felt like a failure for needing assistance, a far cry from the confident woman she used to be.

So, in a moment of desperation, Ashley walked into the Food Hub. The atmosphere was warm and welcoming, but she felt out of place and vulnerable in her time of need. She said, “I never would have thought that I needed help like this. Thank you for helping me.” This is what she told one of the client volunteers, her voice breaking with a mix of relief and sorrow.

As I focused on our scripture for today (Luke 10:25-37), what I realized is that many of us could be that one in need of help.

I was just part of a survey taken in our area around housing and the amount of people who are afraid that they are going to lose their housing. Losing housing right now is a terrible thing because there aren’t many available.

So you might think of Ashley and you might think, well, she could just give up that car. But, that’s her only means of transportation. She may not live on a bus line which will really limit her options. Giving up her apartment might be a wise financial choice. But can she find something that’s cheaper? That’s difficult in our community right now and I want to own that because many of us are proud people and we don’t like to let others know when we have problems, when we have issues that we need to talk through.

“Lean on Me” by Bill Withers was a perfect song for this week, because we don’t tend to share our problems. We try to keep them covered. I’m not suggesting that you stand up and broadcast to the entire congregation, but you might just find another person who’s willing to listen.

I want to specifically lift up right now our Compassion Team, because our Compassion Team has agreed to just listen to who you are and what you are going through. They’re not there to have answers or to fix anything, but they are there to listen. We do have some resources that we can direct you to as well. So, think about that. Think about if that’s something that would be helpful to you.

The thing about the person on the side of the road in the scripture that we read, it’s interesting that Luke makes the point of telling us that they were naked.

When you have a detail like that, you have to stop and say, what is the point? What is he trying to say by telling us that he is naked? They’re telling us that that person had no identity. Their identity was gone. So they are a nobody or they could be anybody. I think when we hear this scripture, we prefer to see ourselves as either the scholar asking the questions of Jesus or the Samaritan, because we would be the one who would do the right thing.

That’s what we want to believe. But Jesus’ initial audience would not have chosen to be the Samaritan. The Samaritan was the despised. They were seen as morally wrong, abhorrent, out of favor with God. Nobody wanted to be a Samaritan. Nobody wanted to associate with a Samaritan. How did they get to be the one who did it?

Jesus is making a strong point that we tend to judge people by what we see on the outside. Just like we may have judged Ashley based on how Ashley presents. We have to be very careful when people come to the church asking for help because it’s easy to look out and see what kind of car they drive and what kind of clothes they wear and we can be completely misreading them. It’s about listening to who they are, hearing their story. That’s how we connect.

It’s not about judging people, although I find it very interesting because the story almost sets us up to judge the priest and the Levite. When we read that they crossed over and walked on the other side of the road, we want to say, how could they? We wouldn’t do such a thing. We wouldn’t turn our back on someone in need. But we have to stop and wonder, why did they do that? The story does not tell us. The traditional answer has been they would have gotten blood on them and then they would have been unclean and they would have had to go through the whole process of cleansing themselves in order for them to do their jobs.

What if the reason was that that scene was too common?

One more body on the side of the road. This isn’t today, there weren’t ambulances running up and down. What if that scene was just too common? Like a person standing on a corner asking for money. How often do we look the other way?

In true Jesus fashion in this parable, he really doesn’t answer the question, does he? Who is my neighbor?

The scholar wants a clear answer. Just tell me who I’m supposed to like. You tell me who I’m supposed to like and I’ll follow that. But please make somebody that looks like me, talks like me, thinks like me. Has the same lifestyle I do. Don’t push me out of my comfort zone. Don’t make it a person from a different country, a different culture, a different gender, a different orientation. Don’t push me out of my comfort zone, God.

Can we open ourselves up to be pushed a little by God to stretch our thinking a little?

This week I received a text from a person who’s watching online, they are unchurched would be the word for them. They do not have any church affiliation and the person texted me and said in your sermon last week, you said that if we judge people, we cannot love them. I said, I don’t know if I used those words, but that was the message I was trying to get across because our judgments get in the way of our ability to love.

They said, I’m looking for a place that I can worship where my son can come with me and I’m afraid of people judging us and she sent me a picture. I had not seen her son in many, many years, but he has tattoo sleeves and he has piercings and he has gauges in his ears. She wanted to know if he would be welcome here.

I told her, I think that there is a large group here that would accept him. But I don’t know if everybody’s on that. But I would hope that if someone comes in here that is not just like us, that we would offer them grace and mercy, be kind and respectful. It’s our job to be listeners.

I want to give us an example of how people and how judgments affect how we act.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a child if I was given a glass of milk and if I had spilled that milk, I would have been labeled a milk spiller. I never would have been given a full glass of milk again because I’m a milk spiller. If you’re a milk spiller, then we’re not going to give you all that milk to just go spill it that we have to clean up. That label of a milk spiller stays with you.

I’m going to say that it stays with you, so when I pour milk for my children and now my grandchildren, nobody’s getting a full glass of milk because they might end up being milk spillers too and I don’t want to create milk spillers. So nobody gets a full glass of milk.

But, what’s the value of some spilled milk? A couple cents? Not even a buck. The whole half gallon costs $2.35.

Let’s not be those who judge people and who label people, but who accept people as they are and look for those opportunities.

It probably won’t be someone laying on the side of the road naked and bloody, but it could be someone that you’re standing in line with. It could be your next door neighbor who just needs someone to listen to what’s going on in their lives because our lives fall apart.

Life is full of joy and sorrow. So we can come together and support one another. We can lean on each other. Because that’s what builds the beloved community.

That’s who we are called to be. We are called to be the beloved community to one another and to every person that walks in the door. May it be so

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This is the first Sunday in this series called Linked By Love, where we are going to be focusing on some gospel passages of Jesus so we can hear what Jesus says and some other passages out of the epistles that remind us of who we are to be.

I went down a rabbit hole in Google and I ran into The Barn, a congregation near Allentown that’s led by a UCC pastor.

I read their About Us Story and I want to read you the short version of their story. They write The Barn began as a place where a diverse group of people could come together in a sacred space that encouraged and welcomed questioning, exploration, creativity, loving relationships, open communication, various opinions and mutual respect. It was a purposeful invitation for people who were open to God to come into an exploration of God into a safe space where people could disagree in love, where all people were valued as a child of God, where perspectives and worldviews were viewed with mutual respect. Where everyone was encouraged to be a teacher and a learner and a place where all were encouraged to be genuine, creative, expressive, and active participants.

When I read that, I said to myself, “I want to be in that church!” Then, I said, “WE can be that church!”. That’s what our mission and vision lead us to. We can be that. We’re not there yet. But we can go in that direction. That can be our aspiration.

Today, we’re to talk about bearing with one another.

When I took Colossians 3:12-17 to the worship commission, I remember when we read this one, they were said “Well, the whole thing is good.” The whole thing is this is one of these feel good scriptures, right? That’s who we need to be. But I said, “Yeah, but what is the one verse that we need to focus on the most?” That is the scripture that’s on the top of your bulletin, way back in the beginning, it’s verse 13. “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

We tend to talk about forgiveness a lot in the church. But here’s my concern. I’m not sure that we all know what that means or how that feels. I’m not sure that we really know what forgiveness is about. I question how many of us actually need to forgive ourselves because we can’t forgive others. If we have not forgiven ourselves, if we hold guilt and shame about something we have done, or use the old confessional language, something we have done or something we have left undone, then we have to clean up us first. We have to do our work.

The church, we just talk about needing to forgive others. It’s lofty and it sounds wonderful. It is wonderful because when we really experienced forgiveness, we will find a peace within ourselves that is like nothing else in the world. But we can’t have that or share that with anyone else until we find it ourselves. So the first thing we have to do is work on ourselves.

I’m going to use the words ‘Protestant Oppression’. What that means is that the Protestant church has taught to try to shut down emotions. Growing up, emotions were not allowed in my house unless it was joy. For you younger ones think of Inside Out. Think of the first Inside Out movie where joy has to be in charge. It has to be joy or nothing. That’s problematic because we do get angry, but we feel anger, we feel hurt, we feel pain, we feel shame and guilt and all of those things. But if we don’t do something with it, then it stays in us. If we don’t direct it correctly, it’ll come out sideways and embarrass us or hurt someone that we don’t want to hurt.

I’m also going to tell you today, that I want you, when you feel something hard, when you get hurt or when you realize you’ve hurt someone else or done something you wish you hadn’t done, I want you to go through that emotion.

What I mean, I want you to really feel it in your body. I was never taught, nor did I teach my children. They’re learning through their therapists as I am learning through mine, how to go through these emotions. But you know what? There is nothing that has ever been hurt by stomping your feet as hard as you can or laying on your bed and kicking your legs, or punching the pillow, or punching the mattress. You can even, for those of you that feel like that’s a bit too much, too much feeling too quick, if you clench every muscle in your body and then let go, you will get an immediate release.

That’s about letting go of these hard emotions. Letting go, because we have to, we have to get rid of those before we can start to feel the peace within ourselves. Here’s the next big thing. This is the key to everything.

Hurt People, Hurt Others.

We need to remember that about us. When we’re hurt, we have the potential to do damage to others. When we are hurt by someone, we need to remember this, because that’s where we’ll find our compassion. I believe that very much. I think that’s at the heart of this. Jesus was about compassion and love. Which again, is like forgiveness. It sounds lovely, and it’s high ideals. But to help us get there, this is the key. I’d like you to write it down, because I want you to remember it. I actually heard it as, “Hurt People, Hurt People.” But I’m going to say “Hurt People, Hurt Others” because I’ve seen dogs hurt and I’ve seen other things hurt.

We have to be healthy and we have to remember that those who do damage are hurt. I thought about this this morning as I was getting ready. I thought, what am I missing? Am I missing anything that was in the news that I should be addressing?

Two shootings, school shootings.

I need a moment of compassion before I speak. A hurting person in Kentucky firing at the interstate randomly. We have to remember “Hurting People, Hurt Others.” That’s where we’ll find our compassion.

All that being said, now I’m going to say, forgiveness is not forgetting. That is a bad cliche that is done more hurt than anything. Forgiveness is not about forgetting. People have to be held accountable for what they have done. For the hurt they have caused. But we have to remember as we hold them accountable that there is a reason that we may not know yet. We may never know. They may not know if they’re not self aware of what’s going on inside of them.

Not the sermon you expected to find today, was it? But I need to remember, when I encounter people that are hurt, or people that are hurting others, I need to remember this. Because that’s where I’m gonna find the love. Because this bearing with one another, means “When you hurt me, I have to still love you because we’re together.”

This is the work of the gospel, and it needs to not just be in our heads. It needs to be lived.

We need to do this in our lives, with our lives, with the people in our lives. I looked up this scripture in the message. Cause I love the way Eugene Peterson kind of cuts to the chase on something. The one verse that I loved is Colossians 3:15. He made none of this going off and doing your own thing. It’s not about I’m mad, so I’m going to take my toys and go home. That’s not the work of the gospel. The work of the gospel is, “Wow, you hurt me and we need to figure out how we’re going to go forward together in a relationship.”

That kind of stuff I think happens in marriages a lot. We’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to live together. Through it all, the other important verse is Colossians 3:14. So once you’ve dealt with the emotions, close yourself with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

That’s who Christ wants us to be. We know, and God knows. God knows that we are not perfect. This Bible, sometimes we just look at this and we talk about all the wonderful things God tells us in it, but it also is full of people, not just Peter, because I do like to pick on Peter, but it is full of people who hurt others. Who made mistakes, big ones. Jonah jumped in the sea to get away from God. God laughed, had him swallowed and spit him out on the shore where he needed to be. It’s full of those. We got to remember that this is the good news.

God doesn’t get mad at us when we make mistakes. God doesn’t get mad at us when we fail, because all of our mistakes and failures are meant to help us grow. What God hopes for us is that we will grow into mature disciples. We can’t just stick with what we heard in Sunday School and Kindergarten. We got to take this and take it seriously and go deeper with it.

So the question is, is there something that you need to forgive yourself for?

Because if there is, you need to find someone you can trust and tell them you need to confess it. Has to be somebody you trust. It has to be somebody you know isn’t going to use it against you. Isn’t going to tell the rest of the community. Isn’t going to make a show of it. But you need to tell them. Because you need someone who’s going to hold you accountable. So you don’t do it again.

To redeem mistakes, we have to name it. We have to learn from it. And we have to protect it. Not do it again. That’s redemption. That’s forgiveness. That is love. May it be so

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When I approach scripture, I usually look for what is it that catches my eye, or what draws my attention.

That phrase, catching people, was the phrase that stood out for me. I want you to think about, if I ask you to catch a person, think about what your body would do.

Would you be like the rugby player on the left, where you come in like this and take them down? Or are you going to catch them with open arms like the right? Because to me, that is drastically different.

This is my struggle with evangelism because when we talk about evangelism, when I think about evangelism, my experience of evangelicals is it’s the rugby takedown. They’re coming for me and they’re going to grab me and take me down. They remind me that I need to say that prayer or I’m not.

There was a trust exercise that I learned many years ago, I have no idea how many, so we won’t count. But where you stood in front someone with your arms crossed and you were to fall into their arms. It was with open arms that you were caught, not taken down. Can you feel the difference?

This is the grace of love, right?

To me it is. I think that is who we are called to be. We’re called to be people who catch people with open arms. We catch people who are falling, who are struggling, who need a soft lane. We can come in and help them, help them to find, not even just a lane, we can find life, new life, the life giving water that is available through Jesus Christ.

This story is actually the calling of the disciples, even though it comes out of the fifth chapter of Luke.

You think, wow, by this time we ought to be somewhere further along in the story. But, you have got to remember that Luke is the one that gives us the large birth narrative. So the first two chapters are all about his birth. Then the third chapter is getting started in the baptism and the wilderness. The fourth chapter, he starts his ministry.

Luke is different in that respect. In Luke, he is already teaching and healing people before he calls the disciples. So he’s already active in the community. In fact, he’s already been to Simon’s house. He goes to Simon’s house because Simon’s mother-in-law is ill. You might remember that story because it’s also in Mark. But here, he doesn’t know Simon. He goes because the mother-in-law is ill and he heals her. And I guess he gets to know Simon a little bit.

Then he meets him again at the lakeshore. where Simon’s coming in. This Simon is Simon Peter, or who we know better as just Peter. This is the good news for us. We should love Peter because Peter makes all of the mistakes that we would make. He does it for us. And Jesus never once shames him or blames him. He accepts Peter for who Peter is and loves him just the same. Continues to have him right by his side, teaching him.

So here in this moment, they go out deep. Jesus does this wonderful teaching. Out in the boat, Jesus looks at Peter and says, go out into the deep water and put down your nets. This is where, if this was contemporary, at least in my head, I heard Peter saying, they’ve done that, don’t need to do it again. Right now I’m headed in for a good meal, a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s another day. Tomorrow will be good. Tomorrow we’ll catch. Are you kidding me? But that’s not it for Jesus. Yes, that’s not actually written in the book. The author is quite kinder to Peter. I hear more of Peter’s staff than the writer did, but they go out again. Peter says, all right, if you say so, but they go to deep water. That means they go to someplace they haven’t gone before. They go and try fishing in a different spot, not their local hole, favorite fishing hole, which brought them nothing. They’re going to go to deeper water. They’re going to go where Jesus wants them to go rather than where they’re comfortable going.

This is a metaphor, people. I want you to be thinking about the fact that that means that we will be called to go where we may not be comfortable.

Instead of going to all the comfortable places, the places that we like to go, because that’s where the fish, the people are. That’s why I chose this picture, that you got to be fishing somewhere deep to find a fish that big. Right? Look how he’s holding the fish.

Yes, I think about all these things when I take pictures, right? He’s holding it with open arms. He’s not just holding it up. That fish has some weight to it, right? Like this will be a strong man pose, but he’s not trying. He’s not even trying a strong man pose. He’s supporting that fish. I don’t know if that fish is gonna become dinner or not. I don’t know what kind of fish it is. That’s my ignorance. Maybe it’s a fish that you would rather put back into the water. But it’s that support.

That’s where I think Paul’s message (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) comes in too. That it’s not about being perfect. In fact, Paul’s story is that he was the worst. Paul is clear, “I was the worst sinner.” Paul specifically attacked the people who believed in Jesus. He was a Pharisee who went after the people who believed in Jesus and harassed them. Even almost to the point of death. He was a horrible person to the Christians, and Christ came even to him and invited him in to know the love and grace, the forgiveness that was available to even him.

I think that we are called to be those who are out catching people, catching people in that supported way.

But I’m afraid that we get caught up thinking about ourselves and what do we need? What’s wrong with our lives when there are others who are struggling? And need us to turn our attention out to them and maybe to look in places we haven’t looked before. Because friends, there are those among us in our community who are unsure of their housing, who are unsure of where their next meal is going to come from, who are unsure if they’re going to pay the rent or the doctor.

Those people need our support. They need the hope that we have based on our faith. They need to know that someone actually cares about them.

There’s also those with the hidden issues that we don’t see. Maybe their sitting down like this person, we might have a clue that there’s issues. They may have experienced a great loss. They may be struggling with how to move forward in life. They may feel like life is just crumbling around them. They don’t have that support system, and that is who I think we are called to be as we catch people and help them have a safe landing.

So I want you this week to pray about this. I want you to pray about who it is that God wants you to help.

Because when we call on God, when we put ourselves out there for Christ, the spirit will show up and you may be surprised by who it is that needs help. Maybe they won’t be in that deep of a water or that far out of their comfort zone because you may find out that someone’s hiding issues because we’re very good at that.

All of our German ancestry helps us to say, that’s my dirty laundry and I’ll keep it to myself. We come in here strong and proud, and sometimes the world’s falling apart. We need somebody to help us, to hear us, to affirm us. To encourage us to remind us that God still loves us.

I was in a hospital room this week and I said, remember, God is here with you. The person shook their head and said, “I don’t know.” I said, well, I’m here to tell you that I think God is here. Maybe you don’t feel that right now, and maybe this illness is in the way, but God still loves you. It doesn’t mean, poof, you’re cured. Doesn’t work that way. It means you will not be alone through whatever you are going through. You will not be alone.

We are called to come together, to be building the community of Christ, to be helping others know that they are not alone because right now life is hard.

I was in a conversation this morning where thinking about the pressures of the world and how they try to run our lives and we have to stand up for ourselves and determine what’s the priority.

Those are the decisions that we make each day, and God wants to be one of those priorities. Right up there with family.

We come together to remind ourselves of that. So that we can go out into the world and invite others to know that love and support that we have found here because Christ comes to bring new life to all by catching all those fish. They brought new life to the fishermen, to the community. It meant People were going to eat. Bills were going to be paid.

We trust and rely on each other. That is how we live. Sometimes our world and our country has us thinking about other priorities, but the reality is we will live and thrive when we are community and we help others in our community.

We need to think about what is the impact that we’re going to make. May it be so.

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In the past two weeks we have had the opportunity to see some of the strongest, fastest and athletes who are at their best as we watch the Olympics. As the culture of our world is sort of on edge. I mean, it’s the culture of the U. S. But I think it’s all over the world. Everyone is anxious. There were some disagreements. There were some heated moments and some judging calls that they didn’t like. But overall, the Olympics reminded us of how community can work, where people who are from different countries can encourage each other, congratulate each other, work together for a common good, for the best in their sport.

There was kindness, there was civility, there was even honor. For me, one of the best moments was when the Brazilian won gold in the gymnastics. Simone Biles and Jordan Childs bowed to her because she fought hard and they fought hard to beat her in the other competitions. But in floor exercise, she won gold. They acknowledged her greatness.

That’s who we’re to be. We’re to be people who see the gifts in others.

Yes, we do our best, but we also want to lift up others because it is together that we rise. Not when we’re separated.

Today, we have this story from Joshua. My guess is that you probably don’t know a lot about Joshua.

We don’t talk about Joshua very often. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, he’s a major prophet. This whole book of Joshua is part of the larger history of how Israel came to be. It was not written as it was happening, it was written centuries or maybe even thousands of years later as the story of the people. It’s a reminder, just like the Exodus story, about how God continues to be present with people. How God keeps promises to God’s people.

So in this one, we have Joshua taking over for Moses. Moses did all of those wonderful things, but Moses doesn’t get to take the people to the promised land. That’s Joshua’s role. So, Joshua comes along, and the first thing Joshua gets to do is here in chapter three, they’re going to cross the River Jordan without getting their feet wet, just like they crossed the Red Sea.

I talked about that last week, that probably when I talk about the Exodus story of Moses you see Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments with the water going up and him standing there with his arms raised and the people crossing the river. Well, it sort of happens again. We don’t talk about the fact that it happens again when they enter the promised land. It’s not the sea. The water’s probably not as big, but they still send the Ark of the Covenant with the priests into the water. The water recedes, and the people walk across, safely, into the promised land.

That’s a great story. Then it gets messy. Because in the scripture that I read, it said, Joshua tells the people, God will drive out.

There are people that are in this promised land. They’ve been in this promised land. They’re living there. The promised land is Palestine, and we can’t ignore that today. So, what God had said was that God is going to move the people, and the first place that they go is Jericho, and you might know the story of Jericho, or maybe you know the song Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. That might ring a bell.

In that story, they’re able to overwhelm Jericho without any violence. All they do is walk around the castle, the fort. But then, I’m going to say, the human side takes over. The rest of the book is quite a bloody mess. Literally, it is about how they killed the people and burned them out, burned out the villages. All for the sake of the Israelites having the promised land.

It leaves us to struggle. Is this the God that we believe in? Do we believe in a God who would kill a group of people so that his people could have the land?

I don’t think that’s who God is. That doesn’t align with the rest of what I know about God in the Bible. What I see in God is one who is present with us. Who encourages us to work out our differences and to build the beloved community.

That’s what I see. That’s what I hear God doing. That’s what I see in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus doesn’t come in and he doesn’t kill the Pharisees. He doesn’t attack Rome. He builds community. He heals differences. And even the epistles. Paul doesn’t attack anyone. He tries to build groups of people who can work together and live together. Work through their differences. There’s several epistles written on that.

How do we work through the differences we have? Because we will have differences. But differences don’t need to end in violence.

What God said at the end of Joshua 1:1-9, I think is the heart to me of who God is. God says to us, “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” – Joshua 1:9.

But as humans, we get scared. When we’re scared we tend to operate under our wisdom, rather than God’s wisdom.

When I think of the people that Joshua would have been leading, they were people who were probably born in the wilderness, raised in the wilderness, with stories of what Egypt was like, and Egypt was a place of cruelty and violence. You either did what the taskmaster said, or you were beaten, maybe even killed.

So, that was the the framework that they had to work from. Going into this promised land, they weren’t people who had been trained to farm the land. or to raise cattle or sheep or goats. They didn’t have that kind of mentality anymore. Because when they were in the wilderness, they were constantly moving.

All they knew is that is the man from heaven, which ends up stopping once during the promised land. Then they have to figure it out.

They could have worked with the people who were there.

Just as Israel could have chosen to look at the Palestinians when the State of Israel was formed and said, “How can we work with these people?” Rather than the choices they made. Even with the West Bank, when the lines were drawn, the West Bank was formed for the Palestinians. Instead of saying, “that’s theirs”, the Israeli government said, “but it’s supposed to be ours.” I haven’t heard that in the news, but they have the ability to say, and this story says, “this is ours. This land belongs to us. Despite what deeds you may have, despite how long your family may have lived there, thousands of years ago, God gave us this earth, this land.”

Instead of trying to work out a compromise, Israel came in with the bulldozers, eliminated the houses. The people had to flea with nothing and we wonder why there’s tension. We wouldn’t be where we are now if other decisions had been made, if other choices had been made, but they weren’t. So here we are.

How do we move forward being strong and creative? Not being frightened or dismayed.

The thing about fear is that when we’re in fear mode, all of the other possibilities go away. We go back to what we knew worked at some point along the way. The psychologist would say, go back to your reptilian brain. You’re not using your higher functions. You’re not using your best thinking. You go back and you become instinctual and it’s about surviving. It’s not about building the beloved community anymore. So how can we stop ourselves from going back in that fear?

The point is we have to trust God. We have to trust that God is in the midst of this, that God is in the midst of the Israel, Palestine, Palestinian, Hamas, Hezbollah situation.

I don’t know about you, but it’s not happening in my country. And I want to cry out to God about that. Let’s go, God. Enough people have died. Enough people have suffered. Make this right. But it’s not my call. It’s God’s. And I have to trust God enough to let go of what I want.

I struggled with this sermon, probably because it was something I didn’t want to hear.

That’s an interesting piece about it. Sermons. The ones you struggle with are the ones that you need the most. And when I think about what I experienced in the last couple days, over and over, the message was, let go and trust.

Whether it was Elsa, trying to control everything in Frozen with my grandson or Dr. Strange trying to come under a circle. You have to let go and trust that God is there. That God will bring us through this. That a way will become known. Even if we don’t know what it is now. We move forward and we work towards whatever builds community.

Because that’s where the love and the peace and the joy of God are. It’s not in the fear. It’s not in the violence, the cruelty, the hate. It’s in the love. We have to lead from our hearts. Because that’s where the love is. May it be so. Amen.

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I first want to revisit a moment that we had last week when Jonathan was ordained. Because this is a moment that we really need to celebrate.

I want you to feel how important you were in this journey of his to this moment. It’s quite an honor when one of our own reaches that point where they are ordained. It was a great celebration for us.

I took this picture right after Lucy had put the stole on him. That is one of those once in a lifetime moments. You only get your first stole put on you once. That’s why it was so important. I coached Lucy so she knew what she was doing. She was really nervous about it, but it was so important for that to happen for them.

I want to lift up Jonathan, because Jonathan was like the farmer, who, while he was with us, was planting seeds. He planted seeds of love and joy with this entire congregation. With each person he met. As he had events that he was running, he empowered people. He planted seeds with people to take ownership of it and to grow it and to carry it out. He supported them in doing that and he lifted them up. He equipped them for the ministry. He was a seed planter among us. Even if that’s not how you saw him, I just want to name that that is what he was.

Last year, I preached on the parable of the sower, and I used this image, and Jonathan was really struck by this image.

I bring it up again, because we are transitioning to not having Jonathan around anymore. That is bittersweet. We are so happy for him and wish him the best in Connecticut. But I want to name that we also miss him.

But in this picture, the farmer is just frivolously planting seed, just throwing it out with abandonment. That’s not the way most of us who farm or raise gardens plant seed. We don’t just walk and throw seed. Because we want it to produce a crop.

This has been a very frustrating year for me as a farmer. Because we planted three rows of corn and three ears came up. In my first planting three rows, I got three stalks. So we planted again. Now, I’ve got about a row and a half.

A lot of it has to do with rain. We look for just the right soil. We get in there, and we pull all those weeds out and we churn up that soil. I admit, we have a rototiller, so before I plant, I make David go through it at least once so that that ground is really ready. We want to have that good soil.

But that’s not what God does. God just doesn’t do that. Plants everywhere. To see what happens. What I want us to talk about is, what does that tell us about who God is?

A lot of us know the Parable of the Sower. We know where it’s heading. I bet you could tell me where it’s heading. But what if we focus on what it tells us about God? Right?

The normal way to explain this, which, if you keep reading in Mark, Jesus goes on to tell us how we’re supposed to understand it. That we’re supposed to look at the different types of soil as our lives. It sort of leaves us with this, so clean up your life.

You clean up your life so that you’re ready for the seeds that God’s scattering.

If God is scattering this seed everywhere, I just want you to stop and think, does God really care that your life is already cleaned up and the perfect soil before God scatters seeds with you? When I think about that question, my answer comes down to, God accepts all the conditions of our lives.

Whether we’ve got it all together and we are the best soil waiting for God’s seeds or whether our lives are a mess. Some of us, our lives are a mess. Some days are better than others. Right? I think God accepts us and loves us and throws seed our way, whether we’re together or not.

So for those of us who’ve been felt like you were told by the church that you’ve got to get your life together so that you’re acceptable to God, I want to tell you, you’re worthy for God just as you are.

If your life is such that there are circumstances that are beyond your control, whether it has to do with health or situations that have happened that put you in a place that you wish you weren’t. God understands all of that. God loves us in whatever condition our lives are.

But if you’re doing really well, and you think that you’re running your life, well then, maybe we do need to look at our lives. Maybe we do need to look and see if we are allowing others to run our lives. To come in and choke out the good ideas and the good works and the Word of God that God is trying to plant in our lives.

Maybe we need to be more vigilant at paying attention to our lives.

Who are we listening to? Are we listening to people that are feeding us lies? That are just trying to divide us and make us angry? Or are we listening to words that move us to offer God our praise, to work towards love, hope, joy and peace?

Is there evil that is talking to us, that is trying to get our attention? If you prefer evil, evil personified then is Satan, I’m not fond of that, but is Satan trying to lure you away from God, from your relationship with Jesus?

A lot is happening right now about Christianity being conflated with our patriotism. So, I wonder if you believe that only real Americans are Christians, Do you look at the world and see the beauty of the diversities God has created? Or are you afraid that as white Americans, Christians, we’re losing something? Because they’re two very different postures.

If we’re afraid, there are people that will take advantage of the fact that we are afraid and they will make us more afraid. It’s what they will do so that they can run our lives. Or we can make sure that we are open to God’s love, joy, and peace and that we are peacekeepers. That we are the ones who are sharing love, who are helping groups come together, helping people come together.

Are we building communities, or are we dividing communities? Are we inviting people in, or are we pushing people out? Those are the things that we need to think about in our lives. Are we making our world smaller, or are we trying to expand? Because, I believe that we worship an expanding God. This God of Abundance.

This was a picture of my garden and some sweet peas that were not weeded. You know, God didn’t care that I didn’t weed that patch. Right? God would have seeded it anyway. Sometimes we’re even the seed. As I talked about Jonathan spreading seeds, sometimes, we’re the seed to take the word. Sometimes we need to be the farmer that’s sharing the word of God with others. Those that we share it with don’t have to be perfect. We can love everyone just as they are.

So the question is, what seedlings will we nurture?

Our mission and vision statement that we voted on last fall was that we believe that God is calling us to be inclusive and generous, to be a safe space for those who feel powerless and afraid. So, are we trying to nurture the little seedlings among us, those who are struggling with what to believe and how to follow Jesus? Or, are we judging people to make sure that they are the right soil? Whatever that might mean.

I think in those phrases, we are naming that we are not afraid. It’s the most repeated phrase in the Bible, do not be afraid. Our mission and vision statement implies that we are not afraid. That we want to live out our calling by God to love others. That we welcome those who are looking to learn about Jesus without requiring them to change.

Jesus reached out and invited people to know another way of living. That is what we are to do, to invite others to know the love we have found. To invite another to find the support we have found. To invite another to experience Christ’s grace and peace, and invite another to find community here.

It’s time to put our faith into action. By living in God’s abundance, rather than being trapped in a mindset of scarcity, we have many gifts to share. Let us be about it. Amen.

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